11 and 12 by Marie-Hélène Estienne and Peter Brook– Barbican Theatre ***

The setting is French-occupied Mali in the1930s and the dramatic action is the violence that resulted from a deep disunity in the Muslim community. Two opposing sects disagree over the recitation of a prayer, whether it should be said eleven or twelve times, and the result is a schism which weakens the native position in the face of the French colonialists. Using this disagreement to their advantage, the colonisers label those who recite the prayer eleven times as political dissenters and rebels requiring punishment and exile.

Having just read Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God it is obvious that Brook’s play fits into a tradition of post-colonialist representation of Africa. Like Brook’s cast of characters, the novel’s tribes are weakened by internal conflicts which have arisen because of the seductive presence of the coloniser. But the same problems which make this particular novel a slow and difficult read afflict this play. Characters are underdeveloped and appear very wooden and un-individuated. They tend to speak proverbially and in the abstract so that each character becomes representative of a type rather than a personage in their own right. And it isn’t just the otiose script that contributes to this stiltedness; the delivery is very flat with little voice modulation so that the audience really has to pay attention to avoid drifting off.

And, as brilliant and accomplished as Toshi Tsuchitori is, his music (played live and on-stage with breathtaking beauty and variety) was soft, gentle and constant but coupled with the monotone of the cast’s delivery and their slow movements about the stage, it had the effect of a lullaby – soothing the audience gently into a state of semi-slumber. Brook, who once wrote in ‘The Empty Space’, that drama resides even in a single man crossing a stage, has perhaps taken this pronouncement a little too much to heart and has forgotten how to make a drama immediate and affecting.

The play owes a lot to Greek tragedy and has much in common with how these plays are habitually staged; the set is minimalistic but highly effective, the costumes are simple and timeless and the characters are keen on declamatory speeches. But unlike Greek tragedy, this play is lacking in passion, the subject is great but is dealt with in too small and muted a fashion. The religious leaders locked in dispute retain the reverence of their disciples; this is not a tragedy because the status quo is not significantly questioned, the populace not seriously disaffected. For my money I wanted to see a more damning indictment of the religious mindset which allowed the violence supposedly at the heart of this play.

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Heldenplatz by Thomas Bernhard – Arcola Theatre ****

The predominantly middle-aged, middle-class demographic of theatre-goers attending Heldenplatz at Hackney’s Arcola Theatre are unlikely to find anything in this play that they would deem controversial or challenging to the prevailing status quo. And it is a shame that, in watching this play at a remove of more than twenty years from its specific historical moment, what must have been an electric and destabilising drama when first performed is now somewhat dampened in effect. Indeed, Thomas Bernhard’s play was condemned in Austria and the playwright himself prohibited its performance there in his will. Exploring the right-wing anti-Semitic sentiments of those in power, Bernhard’s play shows how a post-war Austria has continued to treat an intellectual Jewish family, the Schuster’s, in such a way as to make Vienna just as uninhabitable in 1988 as it was when they fled it in 1938.

Bernhard structures his play with a succession of powerful and expressive monologues and it is the characters delivering these who manage to hold our attention. The minor personages fade into the background as if only there as a foil to those that do speak eloquently about their situation. Hannah Boyde, as the housemaid Herta, delivers the only strong performance from a minor character in this play. She speaks very infrequently but her nervous movements across the stage and her furious shoe-shining manage to convey her sense of entrapment and unease. She is cornered by Barbara Marten’s excellent Frau Zittel and made to listen to her erratic and often hysterical tale of life with the Professor whilst being admonished for her laziness and her naïve devotion to the family to which she does not belong. The performances lack polish with both Marten and Clive Mendus as Uncle Robert tripping over their words but no doubt they will become more self-assured as the run progresses.

The cast were battling against the tiredness of a flagging midweek audience who found it hard to keep their eyes open past 8pm in the warm and dimly lit studio. It was a real shame because the play and the triumphant performances given by the cast were far from soporific and deserved more attention. This is far from light entertainment but the play does manage to encompass humour along with its bleak misanthropy. And there is something very Chekhovian about this play; perhaps because this is the drama of a single family played out in the drawing room and the cemetery, or perhaps it is the desolation of the premise: suicide of Professor Schuster. Like Chekhov, Bernhard emphasises the importance of place; the Professor never felt at home in Vienna, Neuhaus or Oxford and his widow can’t stand the flat that looks over the Heldenplatz. After all the Heldenplatz is a major character in this play, characters continually stare out of the window at the looming square and, hearing again the phantom calls of Nazi troops from the square, Frau Professor collapses in defeat abandoning the hostile world in which she lives like her suicidal husband before her.

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Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World – Tate Modern ****

Founder of the De Stijl art movement and magazine, Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931) is a key figure of Modernism and the avant-garde and, surprisingly, this is the first major exhibition in the UK to be devoted to him.

Paving the way for Dadaism, van Doesburg uses a strict method of abstraction in his works which is underpinned by a rigorous theoretical system. The artworks, posters, furniture, videos and sculptures displayed here are worthwhile because of the illuminating light they shed on the political and philosophical climate of Europe in the 1920s, rather than for their artistic merit alone. The repetitive geometry of black vertical and horizontal lines with primary-coloured cubes is what is most recognisable about the De Stijl movement, and many of the lesser artists represented here seem to have been producing derivative works in the same style. But it is the application of this style to exquisite pieces of furniture and architecture which reveals that there is more to this movement that a slavish adherence to minimalistic form; hence the subtitle of this exhibition, ‘Constructing a New World’.

The De Stijl art movement was a collective enterprise which infiltrated design on a functional level and on a grand scale and this is expertly represented here. After the devastation inflicted by the Great War, van Doesburg and his contemporaries turned to formlessness and extreme abstraction to create a utopian future where distinctive colour and form was abandoned for the perfection of the straight line. Take the opportunity to see these works before the exhibition ends in May because you will be rewarded with a much richer experience than the simplicity of the works themselves suggest.

And if you visit this exhibition it is worthwhile catching the excellent Gorky Retrospective…

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Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective – Tate Modern ***

You get less for your money here in comparison to van Doesburg; the paintings speak for themselves but there just seems to be fewer works to see with less expertise expended over their curation. One of the American greats of the 20th Century, Gorky was a tormented genius who committed suicide after a series of personal tragedies and injury. His early works clearly show the influence of Cezanne and Picasso but he developed his own style of impressionist realism with his portraits; the two versions of The Artist and His Mother being the stand-out pieces of the exhibition. In his later works he developed an abstract expressionist style dominated by bright colours, curling black lines and fluid forms. Some of these are haunting in their nightmarish non-specificity and their use of dark colours and large foreboding shapes. Serene works like Waterfall (1943), dominated by a wash of green with bright yellow shapes, appear alongside angry paintings like Agony (1947) with its angular black and orange shapes on a background of livid red. There is an infinite variety of mood conjured by these paintings, all expressed in an energetic and individual style which embodies a rich emotional life despite the outward effortlessness of the composition.

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Decode: Digital Design Sensations – V&A Musuem **

An intriguing concept which failed in the execution.The notion of digital artworks, the inventive and creative application of functional computer programming, is explored through three key themes: Code, Network and Interactivity. But this exhibition is small and overcrowded with a very narrow two-way corridor displaying small-screen exhibits on both sides leading into one large chamber housing the interactive installations. This made the Code section which held the most interesting works almost impossible to see let alone enjoy and appreciate. These small and understated creations were fascinating and even unexpectedly beautiful showing that abstract art doesn’t need to be static or non-referential; Stockspace (Marius Watz) uses statistical data to create graphic visual patterns which change and adapt in response to fluctuations in the stock market as they happen. The collaborative works in Network, such as the Exquisite Clock (Fabrica), went someway to redeem technology from the charge that it is isolating and robotic by showing that technology allows artistic relationships and connections on a global scale.

The Interactivity theme is the one that seems to be drawing in the crowds; visiting on a Sunday, the whole day’s ticket allocation was sold-out by 3.00pm. Unfortunately the computerised blinking eye, which has been the image adorning all promotional material, is now defunct and has been removed from the exhibition. Children and adults alike were marvelling at the rather basic and unoriginal concept of a video camera recording their image and then projecting it on a screen along with other videos captured throughout the day. The only theme of Interactivity seemed to be the mirroring of the onlooker, the reflection of the physical world through the digital eye. A giant mirror, which only slowly reveals the reflected image of the figure that stands patiently in front of it, superimposing the image on the one captured previously, Venetian Mirror (Fabrica) is the least subtle exploration of this theme but at least it is honest in its purpose. As appealing as this may be to our innate vanity, I hope this endless and boring reflection of the viewing-subject isn’t the future for art, digital or otherwise.

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